English in Navajo (Diné Bizaad): From Code-Switching to Language Reclamation
Runze Qian
(FR) Pratiquement toutes les langues et cultures autochtones en Amérique du Nord sont en danger à cause des influences coloniales. Afin de préserver ces langues et cultures, des mouvements de documentation et de revitalisation des langues prennent place. Par contre, il y a certains problèmes avec les efforts actuels de sauvegarde de la langue. Dans ce texte, l’auteur présente d’abords la langue autochtone la plus courante et la mieux préservée de l’Amérique du Nord : le navajo, et son variant le navajo bilingue – une langue principalement utilisée par les jeunes Navajo, qui mélange l’anglais et le navajo. L’auteur examine ensuite la façon dont l’anglais est utilisé dans le navajo bilingue. D’après ses recherches, il discute ensuite les défis auxquels les efforts de sauvegarde de la langue font face, dont l’attitude négative envers le navajo bilingue, non seulement de la part des locuteurs du navajo plus âgés, mais aussi des linguistes, qui le considèrent parfois « contaminé » par l’anglais. L’usage de l’anglais dans le navajo était souvent considéré comme indésirable, et donc omis durant sa documentation. L’auteur présente son point final : les efforts pour la sauvegarde de la langue ne devraient pas se concentrer uniquement sur sa revitalisation, mais aussi sur sa récupération. Au lieu de se concentrer sur la langue « pure », il faut aussi prêter attention à la culture derrière la langue, et « l’impureté » créée par la présence de l’anglais en fait partie et ne doit pas être omise. En ce faisant, on peut préserver les langues autochtones, et permettre aux personnes autochtones de reprendre leur identité en main.
I would like to thank my instructor, Professor Keren Rice, for all her support throughout the year, in both the U of T courses LIN322 and LIN409 as well as the general world of Linguistics.
1. Introduction
Like all of the Indigenous languages in North America, the existence of the Navajo language is being challenged by the more dominant English language. However, unlike many other Indigenous languages, Navajo is still spoken by 167,000 people.[1] It has maintained a certain formality but has also developed some new, informal features as well. Arguably, one of its most interesting newer features is the formation of a sub-variety called “Bilingual Navajo,”[2] where fluent English-Navajo bilingual speakers may choose to use some English words in their day-to-day Navajo conversations, all while preserving the Navajo morphology and grammar, thus participating in what is called code-switching. In this paper, I will examine why a Navajo speaker might choose to use English words amidst otherwise Navajo speech, how these English words are mixed in the Navajo grammar to still create meaningful sentences, and some of the issues related to language reclamation posed by the usage of this Bilingual Navajo.
2. Bilingual Navajo
2.1 The Navajo Language and its Speakers
Navajo is an Apachean language which belongs to the Dene (previously known as Athabaskan) language family. It is mainly spoken in the Navajo Nation, which is located in the southwestern United States, meaning that the majority of those in the Navajo Nation also speak English. As aforementioned, like most of the Indigenous languages in the world, the usage of Navajo and the number of its Navajo speakers is declining under the domination of English. Internal language preservation efforts see Navajo youths who grew up with both languages using a new non-standard variety of their language called Bilingual Navajo.[3]
2.2 Presenting Bilingual Navajo
Bilingual Navajo is the result of language contact. Here is an example:
(1) Everyday-ísh náníłtééh doo?
everyday-QUESTION you (subject) bring he/she/they (object) FUTURE
Will you bring him/her everyday? [4]
While “everyday,” as seen in this example, is an English word, the rest of the sentence is distinctly Navajo, in terms of lexicon, morphology, and syntax. Of particular note is the Navajo question marker “-ish,” which is added as a suffix to “everyday” in order to preserve the morphological structure of Navajo. These features indicate what Winford (2003:168) defines as a bilingual mixed language: a language created in a bilingual speech community with the grammar of one language and at least some of the lexicon drawn from another.[5] Notably, a bilingual mixed language—in this case, Bilingual Navajo—is different from other forms of languages that result from language contact such as pidgins or creoles. Pidgins are defined as the grammatically simplified ways of communication between groups and are not acquired natively by children, while creoles are defined as a stable natural language that develops from a mix of languages into a new one.[6] Bilingual Navajo is neither, as it is acquired as the new form of Navajo by children and youths and is not a new language created from the mixture of others. Instead, Bilingual Navajo is the result of two distinct languages merging together, insofar as their own properties remain preserved.[7] Additionally, unlike a creole, Bilingual Navajo necessitates bilingualism, as it is only used among and is the result of speakers who are fluent in both English and Navajo. Thus, rather than being a pidgin or creole, Bilingual Navajo is realized through code-switching between two distinct languages. Consider these examples:
(2) Nancy bich’ į́’ show ánílééh!
Nancy it to show singular you make or prepare
Show it to Nancy! [8]
(3) Hait’éigo doo dust anáhółį́į da
why.sub. neg. dust singular you make customarily neg
How come you never dust? [9]
(4) Dóó swing bee ásht’į́į́ nít’ę́ę́
and swing it I do past
and I was swinging.[10]
(5) jump íyiilaa
jump he/she/it made
He jumped.[11]
(6) Swimming asht’ į́
swimming I do
I’m swimming.[12]
(7) Da’ Roy bisister?
QUESTION Roy he/she/it possesses sister
Do you mean Roy’s sister? [13]
(8) “Get in line” shidii’ní
get in line he/she/it says to I
Someone says to me, “Get in line” [14]
2.3 Analysis
From the data above, we can see that this language mix is not random, but rather follows a specific pattern. In (2), (3), (4) and (5), we see that the verb in each sentence is directly from English, which may be due to the complex verbal morphology in Navajo. Since verbs in Navajo can be inflected in many ways to express tense or person, using a verb as it would appear in English allows ease of language usage. In the case of (6), the verb is nominalized [24] by adding the present progressive suffix “-ing,” a verb agreement that would be more complicated in Navajo proper. In both (2) and (7), we also see code-switching in reference to English names. It is quite frequent cross-linguistically for names to be directly uttered in the middle of the sentence, so the appearance of this in (2) and (7) is quite standard. What is more, in (7) “sister” is taken directly from English, with the possessive prefix in Navajo. Kinship is less complex in English than it is in Navajo; the English term “sister” facilitates more ease, as it is generic in that it does not distinguish birth order, thus not showing the exact relationship between two people. Finally, in (8), we see that the quotations are directly said in English and the descriptions are said in Navajo. This is likely the result of the environment in which it is said; if the speaker is repeating someone else’s speech, the speaker will likely directly repeat what was said in English, and switch back to Navajo as the conversation continues.
3. Challenges
3.1 Language Attitudes
Bilingual Navajo is mainly used among Navajo youths who grew up to be bilingual. While it is a form that is rising in popularity among younger speakers, not everybody likes this phenomenon. The formation of a bilingual mixed language due to code-switching is undervalued among both speakers of Navajo and researchers.[15] Under the influence of “language purism,” code-switching is often regarded as “contamination,” while the bilingual mixed language is seen as an “impure” form.[16] For some Navajo speakers, English code-switching is often viewed as a threat to the language’s preservation: “it all starts with people using several English words within a Navajo sentence, later people use full English sentences within a Navajo conversation, and in the end, people will just talk in English entirely and lose their Navajo.” However, it is argued by Schaengold (2004) that instead of contaminating the original language and leading it to its extinction, code-switching actually helps preserve the language.[17]As mentioned above, Navajo is a language in which a word can take on many affixes.[25] For Navajo youths who grew up in an English environment, it can be hard for them to fully acquire this structure, as it is very different from English. Additionally, the high degree of affixation in Navajo usually results in rather lengthy words compared to English, which can pose another challenge. A typical example of this is how Bilingual Navajo speakers will often use numbers as they are said in English, since Navajo has a complex numerical system dependent on scenario. If movements to “purify” the Navajo language take place by eliminating all English loanwords, it is possible that Navajo youths will be deterred by these newfound complexities. By using Bilingual Navajo, the complexity of the word structure of the language can be reduced by a certain extent. There are researchers who also do not favour this mixed form of language. While trying to record a language, researchers often encourage subjects to speak entirely in the language being documented. Even if the speaker utters a certain structure or lexicon in English, it is very often that the researcher will try to have the speaker “corrected” or exclude the code-switched part from their data,[18] resulting in the under-representation in literature of code-switching of these endangered languages. It is understandable that during language documentation, researchers would try to record the language as much as possible. However, code-switching is also a part of language development that we should not leave out; it is not only evidence of language contact, but a gateway to speakers’ language attitudes by examining what kinds of structures or words in the original language are replaced and why. Therefore, we should give credit to the youths who are using Bilingual Navajo for their innovative use of the languages they know, and for providing insights to researchers.
3.2 Language Reclamation
Although Bilingual Navajo has shown us a new way of language preservation, it also raises questions about language and identity. The Navajo culture has long been under the shadow of dominant, colonial American culture, causing its cultural influence to decrease. How can linguists assist in the reclamation of Navajo identity? Of course, the answer is related to language sustainability, but this is not the entirety of it. Language sustainability and revitalization mainly focus on the language itself, often leaving the cultural notes behind. Linguists usually solely concern themselves with theoretical linguistics such as the phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures of the preserved language. It is vital to have a comprehensive guide to the language from a professional point of view, but there are still considerations to be made. First of all, not everyone is a linguist. Very often, those attempting to preserve and revitalize the language are everyday language teachers with little training in formal linguistics. The recorded work from linguists may be very detailed and accurate, but it can only be understood by fellow linguists, meaning that it is not directly helpful to those who are actually teaching the language. Furthermore, explaining concepts in formal linguistics to someone without linguistic training can be challenging. This is why language reclamation should be prioritized instead of just language revitalization – we must consider culture to the same extent that we consider language.[19] The first step that linguists can take to assist in language reclamation is to help develop methodologies or curricula that are based on formal linguistics, but in layman’s terms as opposed to academic jargon. Secondly, linguists should focus more on cultural aspects instead of just formal linguistics. Speakers of an Indigenous language tend to care about identity, community, family, and values.[20] According to Mithun (1998), “language represents the most creative, pervasive aspect of culture, the most intimate side of the mind.”[21] This is how language reclamation is differentiated from purely preserving and/or revitalizing languages. Since Indigenous researchers are in the minority, it is very likely that Indigenous languages are being studied by researchers from a dominant cultural background, which may inadvertently reinforce a colonial legacy,[22] (Errington 2008); only considering how “our world” works instead of observing and adapting to the Indigenous mentality.[23] In the case of Bilingual Navajo, we surely do need to document as much Navajo as we can, but we also need to consider code-switching and how it relates to daily life or history of the Navajo people. Only when we understand how Bilingual Navajo is engaging with the traditional Navajo culture, can we fully appreciate this new form of language and best help language sustainability, leading to language reclamation.
4. Conclusion
In this paper, I introduced Bilingual Navajo, discussed speakers’ and researchers’ language attitudes, as well as introduced language reclamation. For an international language such as English, it is very easy to have a new term designated to a certain invention and there are even naming committees for some of these professional terminologies. However, that is not always the case in Indigenous languages, even for a large one like Navajo. It would be interesting to see how Indigenous languages are adapting to new technologies and/or new inventions: do they create a new term by compounding existing words? Do they borrow the word from the more influential colonial language? Do they just use code-switching? As we move forward, these are just some of the questions we ought to consider.